MR. JUSTICE McKENNA, after stating the case as above, delivered the opinion of the court.
The United States makes a motion to dismiss on the following grounds:
"1. Appellant has no interest in the subject matter of and is not a party to the equity suit out of which the appeal arises;
"2. The order of the District Court if considered as a part of the criminal proceeding is not final, but merely interlocutory, and therefore not reviewable by this court."
We think the motion should be overruled. Referring to the impounding order it will be seen that the Government was not one of those for whom the use of the exhibits was reserved. It, therefore, had no rights under the order. Its rights — or, it is more accurate to say, its powers — were of different origin, were governmental, and would affect Perlman by their exercise. We think, therefore, that he could intervene to oppose and urge in opposition property and constitutional rights and their sanctions. His petition was in effect independent and did not lose its character by being entitled in the equity suit.
The second contention of the Government is somewhat
On the merits the case is rather unique. Perlman contends that the proposed use by the United States before the grand jury of the exhibits as a basis for an indictment against him constitutes an unreasonable seizure and makes of him a compulsory witness against himself, in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. In other words, he claims the same sanctuary for the exhibits in the hands of the court as though they were in his hands and had never been published or delivered to the world. For this he invokes certain principles and cases. The principles are well established. They are paraphrases of the Constitution, giving it in cases a more precise specialization. They preclude, of course, compulsion, either upon the individual or, under some circumstances, his property; nor is it a condition or part of compulsion that there be an actual entry upon premises, an actual search and seizure. The principles preclude as well the extortion of testimony or detrimental inferences from silence or refusals to testify.
The incidences of the cases in which the principles were declared do not help Perlman. In all of them there was force or threats or trespass upon property, some invasion of privacy or governmental extortion. In Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, there was an order of the court requiring the production of private books, invoices and papers, the alternative of refusal being that their character as asserted by counsel should be taken as confessed. In Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547, there was an effort to compel a witness to disclose circumstances which might be
There was again exposition of them and use as evidence in Perlman Rim Co. v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. In that case, it is true, Perlman was not nominally a party, but he was interested in the suit and its success. His patent depended upon it. They were part of his evidence, necessary supports and illustrations of it, as much, therefore, a part of his testimony as his spoken word, as much a part of the records of the court as the stenographer's notes. Their tangibility did not change their character as evidence. Indeed, it gave emphasis to the notes and
But Perlman insists that he owned the exhibits and appears to contend that his ownership exempted them from any use by the Government without his consent. The extent of the insistence is rather elusive of measurement. It seems to be that the owner of property must be considered as having a constructive possession of it wherever it be and in whosesoever hands it be, and it is always, therefore, in a kind of asylum of constitutional privilege. And to be of avail the contention must be pushed to this extreme. It is opposed, however, by all the cited cases. They, as we have said, make the criterion of immunity not the ownership of property but the "physical or moral compulsion" exerted.
As we have seen, Perlman delivered the exhibits to publicity, made them the means of advantage. They, for the purposes of justice, were taken from his possession and volition into the control and custody of the court. Upon formal motion they were released for the use of the Government, a use as meritorious in consideration as that which determined the ruling in Ex parte Uppercu, 239 U.S. 435.
Order affirmed.
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